You may have noticed that this letter was not sent from Scirland. I fear you shall be very cross with what I have to tell you, but please understand that I did not mean it to happen this way. I had every intention of waiting until you came back from the Mrtyahaima before I made any decisions, so that I could talk to you first. (Like the good and obedient son I generally fail to be.) But then word came that you had died in the mountains, which put paid to any notion of talking to you—unless the spiritualists are to be believed, which I doubt. And it put me in the mood to do something rash besides, so I went ahead and did it. Now I’ve learnt that you aren’t dead after all, but it’s too late to take back my decision. Even if I wanted to, which I’m quite sure I don’t.
All of that is by way of preface to telling you that I am no longer at Merritford, nor do I expect to ever go back. You see, my school chum Millpole has an uncle who sails with the Four Seas Company, not as a merchant, but as a scientist, studying the oceans. Right after you left for the mountains he gave a lecture at Merritford, and he and I fell to talking afterward. Well, the long and short of it is that he offered to take me on as his assistant—I think he meant after I graduated, but I ran away from school and joined him. So I’m writing you this letter from the deck of the Osprey, in port at Wooragine. Who knows how it will get to you, or even where you are now. Somewhere in Yelang, if that revolution is going well? I doubt we’ll put in at any Yelangese ports—but, well, stranger things have happened, and quite recently, too.
I hope you aren’t too angry at me. It isn’t that I disliked university, I swear. But I don’t see that there’s anything I could learn about the ocean while sitting in a lecture hall hundreds of miles from the nearest salt water that I couldn’t learn much faster at sea. Millpole senior is a splendid fellow, really quite brilliant—reminds me of you, honestly, except with fewer wings and more water. And male, of course. I’m sure you’ll meet him eventually, whenever both of us contrive to be in the same place at once. I’d say in Sennsmouth the next time we call there, but for all I know you’ll be out in the plains of Otholé or at the North Pole or something. But I promise I will write. If nothing else, I have to meet a Draconean in person. (I can’t believe you truly found them! Or is that just wild rumour? Logic says it’s rumour, but I know what my mother is capable of.)
Please do not die again, even if it turns out not to be true.
Your loving though wayward son,
Jake
I stared at this some time before dissolving into laughter and showing it to Tom. How could I be angry with my son? It was the sort of thing I might have done, had I been born a boy. And certainly I have done many more foolish things in my life, so I was hardly in a position to throw stones.
We sailed from Va Nurang on the same ship that brought the ambassadors. Thu saw us off: a very different farewell than the one we received when we were deported from Va Hing. “Thank you,” I said to him. The phrase was wholly inadequate, but I had no better alternative; there were no words to express the true depth of my gratitude. “Had you not discovered those remains—had you not chosen to dangle them before me as very excellent bait—”
Thu bowed, in the manner of someone who knew the gesture was wholly inadequate, but had no better alternative. “It has been an honour and a pleasure, Lady Trent.”
*
Tom went back to Scirland; I disembarked in Vidwatha, proceeding back to Tser-nga by less covert means than we had used the first time. There Suhail and I served as interpreters for negotiations between the council of Draconean elders and the Tser-zhag king. Letters between the two of us had been infrequent, owing to the difficulty of conveying them; when we were not carrying out our official duties, we talked ourselves hoarse telling stories of the things that had happened while we were apart. I told him of the dancing dragons; he told me about how he won over Esdarr and her sisters, which I thought was by far the more impressive achievement. He also showed me the modern Draconean syllabary, which he had learned from Habarz.
“So,” I said, “we will finally be able to read all the inscriptions?”
Suhail laughed. “We will be able to pronounce them, at least. And we can certainly make a much better guess at their meaning. I intend to ship a set of the most recent edition of the inscriptions to the Sanctuary; Habarz has shown a great interest in reading them.” His smile lit up the room like a sun. “I thought it was impossible for you to find me a second Cataract Stone. Instead, you found me something far superior.”
We left Tser-nga as soon as the negotiations were done, despite pressures to stay. Neither of us could endure the thought of living through another Mrtyahaiman winter, and by then there were others who could communicate to an acceptable degree—humans and Draconeans both. Moreover, my desire to be home had passed “overpowering” and reached a level for which no adjective could suffice.
Besides, I had business to attend to there. With the bright tone of one looking forward to a moment of perfect, undiluted triumph, I reminded Suhail, “I have something to report to the Philosophers’ Colloquium.”
AFTERWORD
I would say that the rest is history, but as the entirety of my memoirs have been concerned with matters historical, it seems a bit redundant.
I returned home to honours and accolades, a thousand requests for public lectures and nearly as many dinner invitations. At a time when I wanted nothing more than to ensconce myself in my study once more, the world demanded my presence, and I fear I ran myself ragged trying to satisfy their insatiable hunger.
But one invitation I would have accepted were I on my deathbed from overwork.
On a beautiful Athemer evening in early Graminis, at a ceremony in their premises off Heron Court, I was inducted as the first woman Fellow of the Philosophers’ Colloquium.
Compared with my elevation to the peerage, the ceremony was not particularly elaborate. The induction of new Fellows takes place in the Great Hall, around a little table with a book. This volume is the Charter Book of the Colloquium; its opening pages contain the royal charter that first created the institution, and the rest of it holds the signatures of the Fellows, inscribed in columns on each page beneath the Obligation that binds all members. That Obligation reads as follows: